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Best Practices

8 Essential Steps to Implement IT Best Practices

In the past, we’ve defined best practices and looked at how they benefit your business. Now let’s talk about how to implement best practices so you’ll start seeing results.

Implementing best practices is just like any other project you take on. Success comes from accounting for every detail. Make sure you have these 8 things covered when implementing best practices in your IT business:

  1. Do Your Homework: What companies come to mind when you think of great employees or stellar customer service? Think about companies both inside and outside your industry that you admire and find out how they do what they do: hire employees, provide customer service, or anything else that catches your attention.
  2. Share Your Information: Make sure your employees understand the best practice you’re implementing―what it is, why it matters, and how they will benefit.
  3. Define Your Metrics: Know what you’re measuring so you can monitor and report on progress. Want to cut response time by two minutes? That’s your metric.
  4. Manage Change: Most people resist change. Make sure you have a plan in place to mitigate people’s fears. This applies to all stakeholders, including customers.
  5. Modify for Your Business: Your business is unique. Don’t be afraid to take the best of what you find and make adjustments to fit your specific needs.
  6. Involve Everyone: Your employees will be most affected by best practice implementation, so make sure they’re on board. Ask for input and be open about feedback.
  7. Align Business and Customer Needs: Even if you call on outside consultants or other experts to help you select and implement best practices, you know your business best. Don’t implement any best practice unless it aligns with your business objectives and customer needs.
  8. Evaluate and Refine: Your work isn’t done once you implement a new best practice. You have to continually evaluate progress even after implementation is over. As your business changes, refine your best practices to make sure your business and customer needs remain aligned.

Growing your business with best practices means happier customers, more productive employees and a better bottom line. Use these 8 tips to streamline best practice implementation, so you’ll see results fast.

What is Private Cloud Hosting?

A private cloud is a model of cloud computing in which a partitioned and secure cloud based environment is provided for individual clients. As with any other cloud model, private clouds provide computing power as a service within a visualized environment using an pool of physical computing resource. However, the private cloud model, this computing power is only accessible by a single organisation providing which offers greater control and privacy.

Public and private cloud deployment models differ even with cost where you can Compare Price of Google vs Amazon Cloud & Dedicated Servers. Public clouds, such as those from Amazon Web Services or Google Compute Engine, share a computing infrastructure across different users, business units or businesses. However, these shared computing environments aren’t suitable for all businesses, such as those with mission-critical workloads, security concerns, uptime requirements or management demands. Instead, these businesses can provision a portion of their existing data center as an on-premises — or private — cloud.

A private cloud provides the same basic benefits as that of a public cloud. These include self-service and scalability; multi-tenancy; the ability to provision machines; changing computing resources on-demand; and creating multiple machines for complex computing jobs and business units pay only for the resources they use.

In addition, private cloud from Computers in the City offers hosted services to a limited number of people behind a firewall, so it minimizes the security concerns some organizations have around the cloud. Private cloud also gives companies direct control over their data.

 

Mobile Device Management

Mobile Device Management: A Growing Trend

From smartphones to tablets, mobile devices in the workplace are here to stay. Employers are happy to let employees access company email and other corporate data from mobile devices, but they often underestimate the security risk to their IT network. Whether your clients embrace a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) model or provide devices to their employees, it’s critical to protect their IT infrastructure against security breaches and safeguard the confidential information that can be accessed if a mobile device is lost or stolen. Keep your clients safe from mobile security threats with mobile device management (MDM).

IBM MaaS360

IBM MaaS360 is the trusted mobility management solution to thousands of customers worldwide—from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. It makes working in a mobile world simple and safe by delivering comprehensive mobile security and management of emails, apps, content, Web access and mobile devices. This award-winning platform streamlines the way IT professionals manage and secure the proliferation of mobile devices in the workplace throughout their entire lifecycle.

IBM MaaS360 Integration

LabTech Software and IBM MaaS360 are jointly scoping the development of integration, enabling partners to utilize a single-pane-of-glass to manage users, desktops, servers, virtual systems, network devices and mobile devices.

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You can read the full article here

8 Trends Shaping Technical Support Services in 2016

Technical support is heavily dictated by technology. Numerous advances in technology have been rapid and have created various paradigm shifts. In recent years, technical support services have changed a lot to catch up with the ever-increasing and diversifying technology trends, not just for business clients, but also for consumers. From “bring your own device” (BYOD) to the use of smartphones and tablets, these massive changes in behavior have impacted the way technical support is delivered.

In 2016, these trends will continue to make life fascinating (and potentially troublesome) for tech support groups. You can expect the trends listed below to continue at least for the rest of the year.

1. Multi-Vendor Calls.

There was a time when a tech company usually only handled their own products though there were a few companies who had multi-vendor customer support as part of their service offerings. Today, whether supporting hardware or software, technical support personnel are expected to be able to assist in cross-platform issues—from supporting apps on Android, to issues with iPhones, as well as having knowledge of multiple operating systems like OS X and Linux.

2. BYOD Calls.

With business apps now available on smartphones, BYOD has become standard for the office. The prevalence of these devices has made it necessary that tech personnel understand the need for training on iOS and Android mobile devices.

3. Chat Support.

Phone support has always been the go-to for companies. However, the 1-800 number is no longer the front line for customer help services. Technical support services via chat, whether on the company web page, on Skype, or other chat and VOIP apps, have been increasing steadily.

4. Support for the Cloud.

Software as a Service (SaaS) and the subsequent Retail as a Service (RaaS) have proven that the cloud is the next great platform. With software and sales systems going to the cloud, support services have to follow. This is probably a good thing because cloud-based systems are more easily accessed and integrated.

5. Social Media as a Service channel, and SEO to optimize sites.

People are utilizing social media to air their questions, regardless if it’s positive or negative feedback. Although it has been recommended that companies do not answer support calls on Facebook, there is simply no way to stem the tide. Solving issues correctly and quickly has become the only way to keep support issues from blowing up on social media, which can potentially be devastating for brand image. If a company has displays great service on social media, expect more people to give it likes on Facebook, Yelp and other social media sites. SEO is also essential to optimize sites and enhance the efficiency of social media platforms. It also helps in generating useful leads for different companies. Have a look at this great site to find more information about the same. SEO and everything else related to it further enhance the quality of customer support, and is therefore, the need of the hour. If you want to learn more on how to have a good SEO, try to look for a consultant like the ones from https://victoriousseo.com/markets/seo-consultant/.

6. First Aid Support with Siri.

Not just from Siri on Apple iOS, but also Google Now, Microsoft Cortana, and Amazon’s Echo. These talking digital assistants on mobile devices in the article will continue to become more relevant. People have started talking to their smartphones, and the smartphones have been great at providing answers. Expect them to at the frontline of support very soon.

7. DIY Videos.

There are tons of do-it-yourself videos on YouTube. I remember that my family used to buy YouTube plays for my videos. For some people, this is where they get their information on how to fix things quickly. Technical support services have not yet fully utilized this potential channel, but, they are getting there. Posting tutorials and other helpful videos on YouTube will continue to be a trend. These don’t usually cost too much, and they bring in viewership, which also helps create a larger SEO footprint for companies.

8. Customer Service as a Priority.

Customer support has been traditionally treated as a maintenance service, and as an afterthought to sales. Big IT corporations like IBM know that technical support is a profit center and that having better service results in more people buying a product. Great customer service is now becoming a selling point for products.

Effects and Taking Advantage of these Trends

The mentioned trends are just some of the major changes that directly affect the way technical support services are delivered.

The essence of these changes is immediate support over multiple channels. Each customer is unique, and this will be evident in the type of support they need. Companies who can address this issue or use these trends to their advantage will come out on top in providing the best possible support and assistance to their customers.

Technical support services have been stepping up to match the needs of their clients. With these continuing trends, the tools for better service have been upgraded—leading to better customer service.

 

 

reposted from : http://www.misgl.com/blog/8-trends-shaping-tech-support-in-2016/